Opinion Contributor

North Dakota's blueprint for environment and energy

From there, it will be loaded onto massive tankers and shipped across the Pacific Ocean, largely to China, while the United States continues to import oil from the Middle East, again, by tanker. The result will be more greenhouse gas emissions, more risk to ocean environments and undiminished U.S. reliance on a volatile region of the world. In contrast, an Energy Department study of the Keystone XL pipeline completed in 2010 — and confirmed by the State Department’s final environmental impact statement completed in August 2011 — said the Keystone XL pipeline would “not appreciably increase” global greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile, in western North Dakota, we will be forced to continue our reliance on trucking and rail transport, instead of building pipeline-gathering systems that would transport the oil safely underground. If built, the Keystone XL pipeline would take up to 500 trucks a day off North Dakota roads, reducing impacts on infrastructure and making our highways safer.

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Oil and gas are only part of North Dakota’s growing energy sector. Our comprehensive plan, Empower North Dakota, promotes all forms of energy: electricity derived from wind; biofuels distilled from the products of the soil, solar, hydro and other renewable resources; as well as coal, oil and gas.

We do it all, and we do it with good environmental stewardship. Nationally, in the decades to come, we and those who come after us will need them all. With each year, technology helps us develop them all with greater sensitivity to the earth and the way we use it so that future generations can inherit a healthy planet.

In my view, that’s what Earth Day is all about — leaving our children the resources they need to live good lives, as well as a better planet.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a former governor, serves on the Senate committees on Energy and Natural Resources; Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; Indian Affairs; and Appropriations.

Readers' Comments (11)

Clean air is good, pesticide free vegetables better yet but... I'd like to leave my children a good life, not be afraid of government (Attorney General Holder comes to mind), good place to work, and not a hand-out from the government, not shutting businesses down with chocking EPA regulations, drill here for oil, not give "loans" to other countries to do so, stop handing money to companies going broke, no bonuses for Fannie and Freddy for their incompetents, no more New Black Panthers, no more Sharpton, Jackson, not more race caucuses in Congress , no forcing farmers to lose their land to save a small fish not used for bail or food because they need the water more,and so forth and so forth. In plain American English, I want my Country back. I want respect for our Constitution Above all, give equality to the majority and stop making us live under the "sensitive" nature of atheists.

The jury isn't fully in on fracking - we need to know what chemicals are being pumped into the wells so they don't poison the water.

The Keystone pipeline is an EXPORT pipeline - it'd go to TAX FREE refineries in Texas where the gasoline would be sent to Europe or S America - The US already exports gasoline - the first time since 1949 - in fact it is our largest export.

Why do you need a giant pipeline to the ocean if the oil is going to be used domestically? Building a modern refinery where the oil is would be easier than building thousands of miles of pipeline across the entire USA.

Or is that talk of energy independence..... just for show, not for go.

Keystone XL is a private company trying to make as much money as possible, any potential benefit to the USA or the people in it is not a concern for Keystone. It's not about freedom, independence or any of that other rhetoric, because none of it matters compared to the money.

Bama Don: I beg to differ -Anthropologic Global Warming/CO2 is a FRAUD. There is not ONE paper in the scientific world, including the IPCC, that proves that Humans and CO2, creates Global Warming.

Every thing coming out of the IPCC is based on computer modeled THEORY - NOT RAW CLIMATE DATA.

After Climategate 1, even Phil Jones at the Hadley Center had to admit that there has been NO warming since 1998. When Climategate 2 followed - it only exposed more of the absolute corruption of this scam.

Or is that talk of energy independence..... just for show, not for go.

Keystone XL is a private company trying to make as much money as possible, any potential benefit to the USA or the people in it is not a concern for Keystone. It's not about freedom, independence or any of that other rhetoric, because none of it matters compared to the money.

What does it matter if all domestic production were to be shipped overseas? Are you against our country getting closer to balanced trading relationships? Do you think they have econuts in the Middle East wasting their time on stupid arguments about shipping their resources abroad?

What the heck is wrong with you people? Is it OK to import oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other places that are not very nice and really do not have our best interests at heart? You do realize that we are on the same planet and the ground beneath our feet is the same as the ground beneath their feet. It seems as though you are all in favor of letting them produce these products - often with far fewer environmental safety measures than we insist upon here. Yet if if our business people try to produce - whoa, can't do that - oh no!

It is clear that you are desperate for any argument to stop the domestic production of oil and gas. It is also clear that you really have no firm understanding of why it is ONLY domestic production you abhor.

Really? Where is the proof? All non-falsified scientific data says otherwise. Man-made global warming is, at this moment at least, an unproved theory (in fact a disproved theory by several scientists) that is followed as a faith not as a science. Now, I will admit that the green religion has some very likable priests (Al Gore, etc...), but even the most well known and public documentations of this religion have been proven so erroneous as to be better classified as political soap operas or science fiction. I admire your faith BamaDon, but remember that their is supposed to be a separation of church and state.

Sue I can,t believe you don't see the actual photographic evidence. Time lapsed photography from stationary cameras for over a year and a half, snapping pictures every half hour during the daylight hours, proving the glacial retreat because of melting. You had better hope its man made and not as George Bush put it, " It's only a cycle "; because an earth cycle is about ten thousand years. Glacier National Park in Montana is becoming just National Park.